Actor Ben Foster is making his Broadway debut in “Orphans,” which opens Thursday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. It’s the first time Foster, 32, has performed on stage since he was 12 years old and living in Fairfield, Iowa.

Performing in such films as “The Messenger” and “3:10 to Yuma,” Foster also has three films coming out later this year. He’ll star as a sheriff in “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” Beat writer William S. Burroughs in “Kill Your Darlings,” and Navy SEAL Matthew “Axe” Axelson in “Lone Survivor.” (For more on his Broadway debut and other projects, click here.)

“Lone Survivor” is directed by Peter Berg and is based on the book by the same name, written by Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell about his experience on a recon mission in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2005, when he and three members of SEAL Team 10 – Axelson, Michael P. Murphy and Danny Dietz — were assigned to kill or capture a Taliban leader. They encountered goat herders along the way.

“The ancient question of war is do you kill a shepherd and save your own life and potentially endanger your people, or do you let him go?” Foster said in an interview. “They decided to let them go, and these brave young men were hunted down.”

In the ambush, three of the four SEALS were killed. Luttrell was the only member of the group who survived, with the help of local Afghan villagers.

“He was the lone survivor, and asked a man in this village to give him water,” Foster said. “The law there is if you give a man water who asks for help in war, you’re taking him in as a family member and you must protect him to the death.”

“So it starts getting down to the bare bones of how do we define defenses of our country, our home, our family?” he said.

The film also stars Mark Wahlberg as Luttrell, Taylor Kitsch as Murphy and Emile Hirsch as Dietz. It is written and directed by Peter Berg, whom Foster praised as a “great mind.”

“He’s incredibly improvisational and loves the energy of who’s going to bring what to the table. He’s an athletic poet,” Foster said.